Throughout this application various publications are referred to by number in parentheses. Full citations for these references may be found at the end of the specification. The disclosures of these publications, and all patents, patent application publications and books referred to herein, are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety into the subject application to more fully describe the art to which the subject invention pertains.
Interaction with real-world objects is a popular topic in research related to real-world-oriented interactive technologies. In the context of display technologies, analog installations with real objects are still very popular in many situations, such as window displays, shops, and museums.
Because of growing interest in the materialization of computer graphics, digital fabrication technologies have recently emerged as one of the most important application fields in real-world-oriented computer graphics. These technologies are rapidly expanding from research laboratories to commodity markets for personal use. Fabrication technologies bring computer graphics to the real world. However, two desirable functionalities in digital fabrication that are missing are the controllability of spatial position and animation. In the digital world, the spatial position of graphical models is freely controllable by merely setting the coordinates. The ability to do the same in the real world is also desirable for digital fabrication.
Two methods are currently available to control objects in the real world. In one such method, the objects actuate themselves. In the other method, the objects are actuated by their surroundings. This latter method is itself divided into two types of actuation techniques: a “contact” technique and a “non-contact” technique.
Among the available non-contact techniques are magnetic levitation, air jets, and other non-contact levitation technologies. However, these non-contact techniques suffer from various drawbacks, including a limitation on the materials that can be used with these techniques, an unsatisfactory refresh rate, and insufficient spatial resolution.